Zoopla

SGE1

For those who don't know - www.zoopla.co.uk

What do people think of it?

I've been using it to check out a few houses I'm visiting this weekend. Luckily, both were bought by the current owners fairly recently (one in July 2006, and the other in December 2002), so there's a recent price to go from, and I've collected quite a bit of info on each property, which has allowed me to enter all the necessary additional info to refine their estimate.

Appreciate that it's probably a bit of a stab in the dark for those properties where very little recent info is available, but what about in the above cases? Are the estimates at all reliable?

superfran_uk

Good to know what houses in the area went for, but don't touch the estimates! They're often miles off - for instance the property I am trying to purchase comes up about 20grand under what it is worth, as it takes no home improvements or extensions into account unless it is specifically told.

SGE1

superfran_uk wrote: »

Good to know what houses in the area went for, but don't touch the estimates! They're often miles off - for instance the property I am trying to purchase comes up about 20grand under what it is worth, as it takes no home improvements or extensions into account unless it is specifically told.

Fair enough - what about if there are no additional factors that I think have been missed out though, ie. the Zoopla questions cover everything, giving the opportunity to highlight all the good (or bad) factors to consider?

Also, when you say "what it is worth", do you mean, I guess you mean the official valuation?

Squirreler

I think you can put your own estimate in can't you? The house we're buying has an estimate even though it last changed hands 20 years ago. I like the 'sold prices' bit though.

SGE1

Anyone else??

googler

Great for getting sold prices, also I find when I copy/paste a group of prices to tabulate them in a spreadsheet, they're easier to manage than others like nethouseprice etc.

Great for map links etc, but I'm not convinced by the results of the estimates that they generate using their software algorithms. Without local knowledge, some of them are wildly off the mark, and I feel that they would still be off the mark, even if all the detail were completed for the houses being compared.

Some streets in my area have wide variation in the style and age of properties - the same street can have a number of quarter villas built pre-war, leading into much more modern housing from early 1960s - Zoopla doesn't seem to take account of that.

SGE1

Thanks, useful comment.

Must admit I've only properly used it twice, but feel that certainly for 1 property, the estimate seems about right:

Property sold in July 2006 for £317,000
On the market since Feb for £400,000 - seems a bit unreasonable, given that absolutely no modernisation has taken place (the place is a bit of a wreck). How the vendor can expect to make almost 85k on a property in 3 years, during a recession, beats me. Or maybe he doesn't really expect to.
Zoopla estimate comes in at £337,000.

TD5

SGE1 wrote: »

Thanks, useful comment.

Must admit I've only properly used it twice, but feel that certainly for 1 property, the estimate seems about right:

Property sold in July 2006 for £317,000
On the market since Feb for £400,000 - seems a bit unreasonable, given that absolutely no modernisation has taken place (the place is a bit of a wreck). How the vendor can expect to make almost 85k on a property in 3 years, during a recession, beats me. Or maybe he doesn't really expect to.
Zoopla estimate comes in at £337,000.

Thought I'd read that we were back at 2004 prices in which case the estimate would be well overstated.

HOMEcycle

According to the latest results from Nielsen and comScore - zoolpa.co.uk is rank number 5 in the UK property portal market. - not bad for a 1 year old company!

SGE1

TD5 wrote: »

Thought I'd read that we were back at 2004 prices in which case the estimate would be well overstated.

I think the consensus is actually that prices are roundabout early 2006 prices now, though I think it really depends on the area.

Squirreler

SGE1 wrote: »

I think the consensus is actually that prices are roundabout early 2006 prices now, though I think it really depends on the area.

We just sold ours for just under what we paid for it in June 2005, if that's any help.